


You had just fallen / To our sworn enemies blades / forever I rage

by Garecc



Series: Of Immortals [25]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Character Undeath, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Minor Character Death, Parent Death, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25106851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc
Summary: Anyone remember how Leto was said to be in tartarus in house of HadesBecause i didn'tAnyway so wouldnt it be messed up if Apollo forgot she died
Relationships: Apollo & Artemis (Percy Jackson), Apollo & Leto (Percy Jackson)
Series: Of Immortals [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/815355
Comments: 7
Kudos: 123





	You had just fallen / To our sworn enemies blades / forever I rage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youurelovely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youurelovely/gifts).



> Wrote this months ago but forgot it existed

Memory is a fickle thing.

When you can't remember most of your life, it is extremely difficult to grasp, to merely fathom how deep and cataclysmic the holes in your mind can be until something fills them.

How important something you've forgotten is until it is far, far to late.

Your twins face.

Your baby brothers smile.

Your child's name.

Your lovers laugh.

Your mother's murder.

* * *

Apollo, as Lester, as a mortal, cannot remember most of his life.

The few memories he does have zipping around his teacup of a brain. Losing depth and details with every breath.

Losing more of what makes him radiant, makes him shine, makes him the god, the deity, the Olympian, the brilliant Apollo.

Losing more of what makes him, _him_.

* * *

Me to had been slain during the second world war.

* * *

Apollo, during the war had allied himself with Posidon.

And well?

Keep had been one of the many, many casualties of the war.

Apollo and Artemis has razed the earth, death and destruction, plague and misery in their wake.

They sought to bring the world to it's knees in their rage. In their grief.

And they would have, if the war had not ended.

If they hadn't been forbidden from acting further in their rage.

* * *

Apollo grieved.

He grieved in bloodshed and anger. In plagues and pestilence. In hundreds felled by his aim.

What are guns but modern bows?

He grieved in clinging to his twin and sobbing, crying, weeping because she was _gone._

And they could have prevented it.

But Titans always reform in Tartarus.

And Leto has always been a titan.

* * *

This isn't a story of righteous anger.

Nor a story of Leto's bloody struggle out of the Pit.

This is a story of how Apollo forgot his mother ever died.

* * *

When Apollo was first turned mortal, first imprisoned in fragile flesh, in a mortal form unfitting of a god, he had a vision of his mother, kneeling to Zeus. Begging him to show her son mercy.

(Leto never expected that when she finally, finally clawed her way back home out of the pit, one of her babies would be mortal, would be facing death.)

The vision was the first time he had seen Leto since her death.

Since she was murdered.

His memory was full of holes, and well?

He had forgotten she had died.

* * *

Sometimes things didn't align right.

The momentary jealousy when he encountered someones mother.

The boiling rage he felt when Jo and Emmie were threatened.

After all, Leto was fine.

He had seen her.

She was fine.

(So why did his heart ache and his hands shake with rage when he thinks of her for too long?)

* * *

It's after the battle when he remembers.

After he killed Commodus.

After Diana dragged him back from the cusp of a too-permanent death.

After, against all odds, and most common sence, they lived.

Diana's presence smoothed over the terror.

Filled the sharp fear.

Because she was here.

She smiled at him, and he had known that smile all his life.

It _was_ the first thing he had seen after all. 

There was an excited light in her silvery eyes. "Oh, Apollo!" She speaks in Divine, the sound of his language of primal concepts and energy woven into sound feels so familiar he nearly sobs.

Her voice is so joyful. She sounds happier than he'd heard her since..

Since _what_?

"Ma finally reformed!"

A thousand memories burst forth in his skull.

(Leto was dead. She was little more than dust in the wind and Apollo was going to burn the world.)

((Leto was dead, and everything was wrong. He was going to everything that stands in his way.))

(((Leto was dead, and he was hugging Artemis because she was dead and they _could have done something-_ )))

Leto was dead. And he had forgotten.

Diana paused, the smile slipping from off her face at his shattered expression. "Apollo?"

"I-" his throat spasmed, and he thought he might sob.

How had he forgotten?

"I forgot." The words fall lifeless from his tongue.

"Oh." Her voice is almost sharp, like running your fingers over a broken mirror. But shocked. So shocked. " _Oh._ "

Then she surged forward and wrapped him into a hug. Pulling him close. She said nothing as Apollo clung to her.

As his mortal tears soaked into her shirt.

As he cried for Leto. For Crest. For Jason. For Hyacinthus and Daphne. For Commodus. 

As he cried for everyone who had died.

"Ma will be so happy to see you. When you return home. She's been waiting so long. So you can't die, Apollo." Diana presses a kiss to his forehead. "Besides. The important thing is that you remember _now._ "

"I- I suppose." He managed. Curling against her.

"I love you, Apollo." Her words spoken in Divine. Hearing his proper name was enough to bring more tears to his eyes.

"I love you too." He repeated, his vocal cords straining around the Divine in an almost soundless wail. 

She pulled back a moment later, smiling weakly. "Stay alive, Apollo." Still divine. Still his name.

"I will." Apollo promised. 

At that, silent light began to creep across her body, and Apollo only just remembered to glance away, and she was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment and Kudos :)?


End file.
